Assistant editor (politics) Philip Webster retires today (Wednesday) after 43 years at The Times.

Here, The Times’ deputy political editor Sam Coates and the title’s director of editorial comms Jessica Carsen pay tribute to Phil’s service.

Phil (pictured) was not just a political editor of The Times. He has been the heart of everything to do with politics at the paper over five decades.

He was a colossus of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eras, with contacts unrivalled elsewhere. With cabinet ministers on speed dial, he saw the paper through countless scoops and inside accounts, wars and disasters. He is unflinchingly generous to those around him, particularly younger reporters who learn their trade at his feet. He remains the best intro writer in the business, and when he retires today, after 43 years at this paper, The Times and Times readers will miss him deeply.

Phil’s many scoops for The Times include the story of John Major’s affair with Edwina Currie, contacting him shortly before publication to warn him of the contents of the Currie diaries; the revelation that Major would be entering the Tory leadership race if Thatcher did not win on the first ballot; the interview with Blair on August 31, 2006 that caused the final revolt of his leadership and, ultimately led him to stand down; the story that revealed James Purnell had resigned from the cabinet in 2009, provoking another crisis for Brown.

Phil’s splash that Blair and Brown were about to rule out joining the euro, which came two weeks after the FT had said we were going in, was one that made huge political waves and significantly moved the financial markets. There were many, many other Blair-Brown scoops during the New Labour years as Phil was seen as perhaps the only reporter who was trusted by both sides.

Not content to let his contacts go to waste, for the past year Phil has been editor of The Times’ Red Box daily political bulletin. His authority in Westminster ensured it was a must-read from day one and we hit our six-month target of 30,000 readers in five weeks – more than The Telegraph had amassed in three years. That was Phil’s peerless reputation, built up over 37 years in the House of Commons lobby team for The Times.

Even the 5am starts for Red Box have been no problem for Phil, who maintains that “even though it’s a long way from the hot metal days of 1973, it’s just as much fun”. The 2015 General Election was the eleventh he has covered for The Times and again he has been doing so alongside cub reporters, showing them how to sniff out stories, secure scoops and handle contacts.

He has walked through picket lines for Times readers, helped get a paper out on the first day we introduced computers to the staff, was locked up in Africa with Neil Kinnock and, perhaps most impressively, has survived nine (nine!) Editors of The Times. He has been an inspirational figure at our newspaper and to parliamentary correspondents across the lobby.